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7correct to beat the crowd
This comic trivia quiz has 147 free questions with answers and goes well beyond capes. It starts with the first appearances every fan should know (Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #27, Amazing Fantasy #15) and the creators behind them: Siegel and Shuster, Bill Finger, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko. Then it widens out to the history of the medium: the Yellow Kid and yellow journalism, the Golden and Silver Ages, the Comics Code Authority and Fredric Wertham's moral panic, the founding of Image Comics. There are rounds on graphic novels (Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis, Saga, The Walking Dead), on newspaper strips (Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes) and on comics from beyond the US: Tintin, Asterix and One Piece. Difficulty runs from easy openers to questions that will test a lifelong collector. Every answer has been verified against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 147 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman first appeared in which comic, cover-dated June 1938?
Action Comics #1
Action Comics #1 cost ten cents; a copy sold for $6 million in 2024, and its June 1938 cover date is the usual starting point of the Golden Age of comics.
Q 02Which artist, alongside writer Stan Lee, co-created Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15?
Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko defined the look and co-plotted the early stories, then quit Marvel in 1966 and stayed famously reclusive for the rest of his life.
Q 03Which anthology comic introduced Wonder Woman in October 1941?
All Star Comics #8
All Star Comics #8 tucked her eight-page debut in beside the Justice Society to test whether readers wanted her; they did, and by 1942 she led Sensation Comics and had a title of her own.
Q 04Which Marvel Comics title introduced Iron Man, cover-dated March 1963?
Tales of Suspense #39
Tales of Suspense #39 had Tony Stark captured in Vietnam and ordered to build a weapon; he built a suit of armour for himself instead and escaped, and only got his own title in 1968.
Q 05In which issue did the Justice League of America first assemble?
The Brave and the Bold #28
The Brave and the Bold #28 was a tryout that brought the superhero team back for the Silver Age; the League only got its own title after it sold.
Q 06Wolverine's very first appearance was a one-panel teaser at the end of which 1974 Marvel issue?
The Incredible Hulk #180
The Incredible Hulk #180 hid him in its final panel; he fought the Hulk properly in #181 and only joined the X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1 the next year.
Q 07Which writer and artist introduced Deadpool as a villain in The New Mutants #98?
Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld
Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld's mercenary reminded Nicieza of DC's Deathstroke, Slade Wilson, so by his account he named him Wade Wilson as an in-joke.
Q 08Which independent comic book publisher releases the space-opera series 'Saga'?
Image Comics
Image Comics lets creators keep their properties, so Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples own Saga outright. Image was founded in 1992 by artists who walked out of Marvel.
Q 09Which writer created the Vertigo series Preacher with artist Steve Dillon?
Garth Ennis
Garth Ennis, a writer from Northern Ireland, built the series on a blunt premise: a disillusioned Texas preacher crosses America to literally find God.
Q 10Lois Lane and Clark Kent report for which newspaper in Superman comics?
The Daily Planet
The Daily Planet began as the Daily Star, named after the Toronto paper Joe Shuster sold as a newsboy; it was renamed once the strip ran in real newspapers that shared the name.
Q 11The Silver Age of Comics is generally said to start with the 1956 revival of which hero in Showcase #4?
The Flash
The Flash's 1956 revival in Showcase #4 introduced Barry Allen in place of Golden Age speedster Jay Garrick; DC soon revived Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman the same way.
Q 12Which 1890s New York cartoon character, a bald boy in a nightshirt, is said to have given sensationalist journalism its name?
The Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid was such a draw that Hearst poached his artist from Pulitzer; both papers then ran rival versions and were mocked together as the 'yellow kid papers'.
Q 13How much were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster paid for the first Superman story in 1938?
$130
Q 21Which two publishers were the last to drop the comics industry's 1954 self-censorship seal, in January 2011?
DC and Archie
DC and Archie were the only publishers still printing the seal by 2011, so when both quit that January it simply ceased to exist, a decade after Marvel had left for its own ratings.
Q 22What was Stan Lee's birth name?
Stanley Martin Lieber
Stanley Martin Lieber, born in Manhattan in 1922, used 'Stan Lee' as a pen name to save his real name for serious novels, then adopted it legally.
Q 23With what one-word motto did Stan Lee sign off his columns and promotional copy?
Excelsior!
$130 was $10 a page for 13 pages, and the release the pair signed that March also handed the publisher all rights to Superman; their 1947 suit to win him back failed.
Q 14Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met at Glenville High School in which city?
Cleveland
Cleveland's Glenville High School is where the two met as teenagers in the early 1930s; they bonded over pulp fiction and spent years trying to sell Superman before DC bought it.
Q 15In the 1992 comic Superman #75, which villain beats Superman to death?
Doomsday
Doomsday and Superman beat each other to death in Superman #75, released in November 1992 in a polybagged black edition that sold millions of copies; Superman was back within a year.
Q 16Which cartoonist created the self-published fantasy series Bone, launched in 1991?
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith self-published Bone through his own Cartoon Books from 1991 to 2004, 55 issues in all; Scholastic's colour reprints later made it a children's bestseller.
Q 17A year before Pearl Harbor, the cover of Captain America Comics #1 showed the hero doing what?
Punching Hitler
Punching Hitler while the US was still neutral sold close to a million copies and drew so many threats that police were posted to guard the publisher's offices.
Q 18Captain America was revived from decades frozen in ice in which 1964 comic?
The Avengers #4
The Avengers #4 (March 1964) had the team find Captain America frozen in a block of ice; in the retconned origin he had fallen into icy Atlantic waters in the last days of World War II.
Q 19Which 1954 body banned the words 'horror' and 'terror' from US comic-book titles?
The Comics Code Authority
The Comics Code Authority, set up by publishers in 1954 after Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency, barred 'horror' and 'terror' from titles, and its seal governed newsstand comics for decades.
Q 20Which Belgian cartoonist created the Smurfs in 1958?
Peyo
Peyo, born Pierre Culliford, introduced the Smurfs as side characters in his Johan and Peewit strip in the Belgian magazine Spirou in October 1958.
Excelsior! is Latin for 'ever upward' and the motto of New York State; Lee closed his Stan's Soapbox columns with it for decades.
Q 24Jack Kirby, known as 'The King' of comics, was born under what name?
Jacob Kurtzberg
Jacob Kurtzberg signed early work as Jack Curtiss and Lance Kirby before settling on Jack Kirby, a name he reportedly liked because it sounded like James Cagney.
Q 25After leaving Marvel for DC in 1970, Jack Kirby created which multi-title saga?
The Fourth World
The Fourth World was planned as one finite epic told across New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle, but DC cancelled two of the three in 1972 before Kirby could finish it.
Q 26Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider where?
At a science exhibit
At a science exhibit, the bite gave Peter Parker powers he first used to make money; he turned hero only after a burglar he had let run past went on to kill his Uncle Ben.
Q 27Which newspaper publisher spends his days slandering Spider-Man?
J. Jonah Jameson
J. Jonah Jameson publishes the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker sells photos of himself; Jameson debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in 1963.
Q 28Which character took over as Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe after Peter Parker's apparent death?
Miles Morales
Miles Morales owes his look to a sitcom gag: writer Brian Michael Bendis says he saw Donald Glover in Spider-Man pyjamas on Community and thought he would like to read that comic.
Q 29Which 1980 X-Men storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ends with Jean Grey's death?
The Dark Phoenix Saga
The Dark Phoenix Saga was drawn with Jean surviving, but editor-in-chief Jim Shooter ruled that a heroine who had wiped out an inhabited star system could not walk away, so the final pages were redone.
Q 30In Marvel Comics, mutants are born with which genetic trait that gives them their powers?
The X-gene
The X-gene puts a name to Stan Lee's shortcut: weary of inventing a new origin for every hero, he decided the X-Men were simply born with their powers.